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Geez, there are some pretty ordinary takes in this thread. Oliver is an absolute must keep.

I dont think anyone is questioning around the financial stuff, but more so his worth as a player. Personally if it was up to me he'd be the highest paid player on our list. That's how bloody good he is.

whatever he asks for he gets. He has shown more than Petracca over a longer period of time. Multiple All-australians and multiple best and fairests. Whilst petracca has the forward craft, petracca doesn't have the clearance work that Oliver has. Oliver is quite possibly the best midfielder the Mfc has ever had. Can this be denied? If not, then he is definitely in the mix. On average 50% of first rounders fail. so the odds that we get a player as good as Oliver with 2 first rounders is next to zero.

I have no inside info and Clarrie is notoriously media shy, so it is difficult to glean any knowledge of what he is thinking, but I will go out on a limb and say I can't see him wanting to leave Melbourne. Call it a feeling or whatever. I saw an interview with him recently where he said he didn't enjoy being in the hub in 2020 because he missed his girlfriend and simple things, like sleeping in his own bed. He gave me the impression of someone who doesn't like change. Every time I've seen him with his team mates he is very animated and clearly enjoying their company. At the game yesterday after Trac kicked a goal from a pass by Oliver, Clarrie ran down to give Trac a hug and a peck on the cheek! No, can't see him leaving. Call me a romantic, but sometimes money doesn't drive everyone.

Whats wrong with having news items about the women's team? They've qualified to play finals and have just beaten 2 top 4 teams on consecutive weekends. When was the last time the blokes did that?

On Saturday I saw both Goodwin and Yze have one on one chats with Oliver during the breaks and while Oliver was on the boundary. I’m not sure if the club is trying to really show him how much he’s wanted and needed, or if it’s just a normal process. But they certainly didn’t take anyone else for one on one chats. Oliver is an out and out star. His ability to win the contested ball is extraordinary and he is as important to our team as May is. Anyone who thinks we can just replace him is kidding themselves. He is consistently in the top five players in the competition for clearances and contested possessions. Unless you think we are replacing him with Cripps, we will be a far poorer team without him. And our chances of a flag will be significantly diminished. We need to move heaven and earth to keep him!

Especially if your brown coloured glasses obscures the 5 articles about the Sat match apparently hidden by the more recent 3 AFLW articles. None so blind ....

Self-protection? He should get an extra week for telling porkies.

Very strange thread. Who cares what he earns. The only thing that matters is that he stays a demon, preferably long term..

Its time the AFL made an example of a 'name' player like Danger and not just the ANB's of the world. In both cases the concussion occurred when the player's head hit the ground, after the infringement. In both cases the optics were very bad. In both cases the infringement was sent directly to the Tribunal. ANB got 4 weeks. Appeal rejected. Commentators said at the time that if ANB was 'name' player he wouldn't get the same treatment. Concussion is taken far more seriously now than as it should be. Time for the AFL to set down the law.

They can’t let their little darling off a week after changing the concussion rules to protect players because they’re concerned about player welfare. Remember that May got a week for a bump and he wasn’t even moving. He has to get scrubbed.

My thing with Oliver is that he’s an elite footballer and we will never win a flag without him, or a direct replacement for him. Martin doesn’t drive standards either. Make no mistake, lose Oliver and our midfield drops from good to bloody average.

I dislike they way some players line up for goal and they kind of juggle or jiggle the ball around when in their hands as they walk into their routine to kick. Pettraca and I think Kossie were doing it. Wished they held the dammed thing steady after they set it straight and before they start their approach. I think it is a precision thing not a feel kick. Any slight change in ball drop and angle difference will show up on the flight of the ball, exaggerating slices, hooks, fade outs and aims. Treat it with respect and the elites can get it to fly and move the way they want it to. The professional golfer does it with small tweeks of the swing. Hoping our kickers can get the same precision. Takes alot of repetition. Hopng Ben Brown shows them what is needed to have a good gait that helps him feel comfortable, and gets the ball to fly where he wants it to. Hate for him to learn the "Melbourne way". C'mon Dees kick straight, be professional.

Anyone else think it is very poor for Adelaide Crows Director (and good mate of Dangerfield) Mark Ricutto to come out and support Danger over the welfare of one of his own very young players. What message is that sending to his club and parents of current and future players. "Adelaide legend Mark Ricciuto believes Geelong star Patrick Dangerfield shouldn’t be suspended for longer than one game for an incident of “bad luck” with Crows defender Jake Kelly" -mark-ricciuto-comments-how-many-weeks-tribunal-hearing-jake-kelly

As most of you have already soiled yourselves over next week I thought I’d let you know why we’ll win. 1. Our back 6 will own their forward 6 2. With Viney back our midfield can comfortably match theirs 3. With TMac finding form and if Jackson can continue his Q4 form with Spargo and Kozzie running around our forward line can kick a winning score. 4. Gawn and the mids will work better together 5. Petracca 6. Oliver 7. May and Lever enjoy your week

Player List:- 7. Jack Viney 12. Toby Bedford 14. Michael Hibbert 16. Bailey Laurie 17. Jake Bowey 18. Jake Melksham 19. Fraser Rosman 22. Aaron vandenBerg 26. Harrison Petty 28. Majak Daw 33. Oskar Baker 34. Deakyn Smith 46. Austin Bradtke 47. James Munro 49. Cory Stockdale 52. Mitch White 53. Zac Foot 57 Aiden Quigley 59. Lachie Modica 60. Jack Bell 64. Cory Machaya 67. Tom Freeman 70. Luca Goonan 76. Ryan Sparkes 79. Corey Ellison

Jim Cardwell

Lots of pressure on club this year. Pressure on Goodwin. Pressure on Pert, Bartlett and co to justify decisions and mitigate potential disaster. If they don't sign Clayton we'll be losing our best midfielder since our last flag winning team. Anyway even remotely suggesting he is.not a huge loss is absolutely kidding themselves. Losing Oliver will set us back years. Richmond, Hawthorn, Geelong never let young guns in their prime walk. They kept the core in tact. Oliver would be leaving before his prime and he's already amazing. Needs to be signed up asap.

Thought we changed where we take the ball to from the half back area. We seemed not to use the boundary area or the fat sides. Looked like they used the central and wing corridors. Our mids couldn't get any free run for the taps at stoppages. Max connects best when the mids are on the move. If the umpires allowed more harassment of us then we need to get tougher and throw our weight around. Tell Pettraca to get angry and stop treating the opposition like friends when he crosses the white line. Run through a few of their are taggers and pests.

Where was Nibbler's "bad luck"? A tackle, a legal execution of a skill of the game ended with bad luck where the victim hit his head on the ground. No instead the Adelaide medical staff threw Nibbler under the bus. That's disgraceful from Ricciuto and a clear star player bias.

Players who aren’t getting dropped this week no matter how much you dislike them: ANB, Spargo, Jetta.

I think it is a bigger picture than suspension, If Kelly develops any brain injury further down the track, he should be able to sue both the AFL and Danger. Make the head sacrosanct. Middle and older ages are great to live. He shouldn't be denied that because of the actions of Danger.

So in summary: Had 10 steps to assess options (2 - 3 seconds) Chose not to tackle Chose not to smother Chose to bump Picked up speed to reach Kelly Contact was late No evidence of self-defence It is a compelling case to find him guilty. There is no evidence to get him off - except for the AFL's 'secret herbs and spices.

Yep, he accelerates into the contact. No apparent thought of smothering the handball. A telling part of this episode happens seconds prior to the hit, if anyone can find the vision. Dangerfield is brought down in a vigorous tackle as he motors through the centre with the ball. As a result he was fired up and angry, and Kelly was the next target to present on his radar.

Surely this evidence sinks any defence Dangerfield puts up. Must get 3 or more otherwise the whole system is a joke which we all know it already is.

Well we have some that say that he's actually not that important of a player and can be replaceable (ridiculous really..) and some questioning whether they're willing to pay top dollar. Give him what he wants.

What happened to the AFL rule that coaches and players are prohibited from public comment on MRP decisions. I'm sure the AFL love the 'click bait' but he shouldn't be allowed to do this. He is even saying previous cases should be ignored. He knows he is in strife. That he is (player) President of the AFLPA makes it even more important that he is not seen to be 'above the law' so should get the mandatory 3 weeks that goes with direct referral to the Tribunal.

OK, but put yourself in the shoes of the MRP and you'll see that May was completely to blame as he (a) isn't a "name" midfielder (ii) doesn't have a Brownlow or wasn't in contention for it (iii) hasn't played in a recent flag (iv) isn't fawned over by footy journos. Open and shut case. It's known in football judiciary circles as "the Trengove principle", although in recent changes to the tribunal guidelines, it was updated to "the ANB principle".

Everyone calling for Max to be protected by umps. Why not call for our own players to dish out the same to oppo ruckmen? Perhaps even get them to protect Max? Show some anger? Care? Passion? Just a thought..

Excellent point but will the heat go onto North? Highly doubt it ... the footy public & media will pounce at every opportunity to get stuck into Melbourne supporters Demon fans who want to beat themselves up over this issue astonishes me. You're allowing yourselves to be bullied We are a small club with a small supporter base that has played 1 finals series in the last 14 years. Getting 21k is quite a high figure when considering how [censored] we've been for the last decade and a half. We also have a number of older members in the Covid-Kill zone Do they expect us to be masochists? North fans don't bother turning up and we get crickets And the club achieving 50k members 2 years ago was a minor miracle all things considered ... the club is damn lucky we're still here in any capacity Trying winning more games than we lose for a change and watch the crowds increase

Then 2 is a lock.

the club will never win a flag with a multiple AA midfielder under 25. sound logic mate. Not everyone is a leader mate, hence the term leader.

I think Oliver and Trac are fabulous and we should pay plenty to keep both. I notice when one of them passes successfully to the other, they smile, seeming to want the other to star as well. Good selfless camaraderie influences players to stay. Conversely I'd notice Viney seem to fight Clarry for the ball. (Maybe less last year?) Great to keep Oliver and Trac playing together and to always generally promote team first play.

Have just had a watch of the replay and it's amazing how many of the views expressed here seem way off the mark (in my opinion). Some people forget that we were playing an opponent so are not going to have everything go our way. Take a look at the Freo forums (or any team that is lost this week) and it looks very similar to us after a loss - just switch a few players names around and we wouldn't know the difference! Not a perfect performance by any stretch but all teams develop over the season and I would have definitely taken this performance prior to the game if given the option. Freo had injuries but we did as well - No Brown or Weiderman makes us look very fragile on paper. We will have a better indication after the next few weeks. So aside from Lever / May dominance, Jordon's game, some of my takeaways were: - Spargo and Kossie possies forward of centre lead to goals. They are the best at lowering their eyes and finding people in dangerous spots inside 50. - Hunt played much better than I remembered. His job is high risk high reward and sometimes it doesn't come off. But when it does, it is dynamic and in this game his closing speed was critical in a number of instances. When people like Hunt (it happened to a number of players) get caught holding the ball it is usually more a symptom of what is (not) happening up the field. - I have loved Jones because he carried the team for so long. But beyond him getting 300 games I don't think he should be in the team. If not for his years of service and proximity to 300 he would be the one I would drop first. - We missed A LOT of easy goals - Petracca, TMac hitting the post, Fritsch, Lever after a 50 and Jackson in the last quarter. Tighten a few of these up and it looks pretty different. - Centre clearances are a problem. We were unlucky a number of times. But there were others where they just got us on the outside. This happened around the ground a fair bit as well. When the player standing on the defensive side of the contest gets sucked in, we look very vulnerable when we lose it. Having said that, this happens to every team and we did it to Freo a couple of times too. As Fyfe mentioned before the game, a key part of the strategy is to force their opponents into the contest in the centre square so that they have space on the outside. What I like is we are trying lots of players in there and no doubt will be doing lots of homework and analysis on this - there is certainly a lot of scope for improvement here! - Rivers started very strongly in the first quarter. Seemed to rush his disposals after that - given our defence was largely on top, not sure if he was given a different role after quarter time as he was much quieter. - I thought one of my absolute favourites in Nev might be on borrowed time. But I thought he was solid - won a number of crucial one on ones. I did notice however, that the dockers looked to exploit him and Salem's lack of height in the second half when they tried to narrow their eyes more going forward. Will be interesting to see if Goodwin looks to bring in Hibberd or even Petty / Smith so we are not exposed in this way in future with teams that have multiple dangerous key forwards. - Brayshaw did not attend one centre bounce. Given Gus has played his best games in the centre square, Viney is out and some of the other players that attended centre bounces included Kozzie, Sparrow, Jordon, Harmes, ANB, Jones, I can't work out what is going on. He kicked a couple of nice passes and got a few good tackles in but if he's not getting a run onball when Viney is not in the team, then why wasn't he traded? Maybe then we could have traded for a specialist winger? I like him as a player but it seems like he's losing in being played out of position and we're losing in him (and Jones) playing as wingers - what am I missing?

Early thoughts from the early stages of the last quarter, we really need to become more clinical (which was Freo’s issue as well). While Freo have had better clear shots on goal we’ve had several chances where we’ve stuffed up the inside 50s (which sounds way too familiar). I was really hoping that Yze and Williams would improve that but jeez it’s the same issue every bloody year. I haven’t said it much because it’s been said a lot, but May and Lever were absolutely sensational and exactly the reason we’ve paid such a high price for them. We paid star prices for them and we got match winning performances.

First game done we win. Oliver most possies. Absolutely fearless, copped a few hard knocks, just gets up and keeps going. Credit to the Team and himself. I don't think i have seen one of his games where he hasn't heavily contributed. Whatever he wants get it and give it to him. Every other one of these Basta## teams would. Thinks so far ahead it's unreal WTF is this topic on about???

Sorry mate. That is just wrong 17 other Clubs would love the services of Clarry

Because he hits the scoreboard. Has kicked 8 goals in 3 games (albeit 2 practice matches) which puts him on pace for a 50 goal season. Not a chance in the world you would even briefly contemplate dropping Fritsch and he’s certainly a player the opposition would be weary of.

Not alone Petracca won't. Oliver is our Scott West, except better. He'll be among our best players week in week out and that is priceless - especially when we have so many inconsisent players in our midfield. He's the stable rock of of stoppages when everyone else is being mixed and matched and experimented with because none of them are proving reliable enough. I mean, seriously, Oliver's closest rival for clearances on the weekend was Alex Neal-Bullen who is simply not an inside midfielder.

We don't have one. Petracca is too busy trying to do everything for us. Oliver is chasing stats instead of the opposition. Viney wants to kill everybody. Gawn is more worried about hitouts than clearances. Love them all as blokes and players, but not one of them is a 'directional' type leader. Viney isn't a communicator and Gawn still has a bad habit of going for a massive random punch forward when he's frustrated. Max is the one that needs to add this to his leadership. He's a great front man for our club, a sensational player, but gut feel is he's classed as a leader because he's a great trainer and a great bloke. Not the 'ruthless' leader we really need.

A real bummer. Love the way she plays. And it is crazy how much her kicking has improved this season (which interestingly is a feature of many of the men recruited form Ireland - I'm convinced it is because they haven't had a lifetime of rubbish technique to overcome a AFL level). If I was Goodie i'd show the men's team the vison of the incident Goldy did her hammy. Inspirational. Was caught out the back and with her desperate chase and final lunge at the freo player. Saved a sure goal as if the Freo player had been able to collect that ball would have run inti an open goal. We might well have lost the game, and perhaps a shot at flag if not for her desperation. Fantastic stuff.

I can’t see how the MRP can do anything but make a statement early in the season. If they do, and he gets at least three, he will have been backed over by the karma bus after the three card trick that he and the crows pulled to get Jack Trengove suspended for three. And he played the next week! Sorry, my personal dislike for the man showing.

Really surprised so many are picking Melksham in the team. He has done little in the last 2 years, does not tackle, does not work hard enough, has had no preseason games/form....GET HIM IN. I am presuming those selecting Melksham really want Goodwin to lose his job. Melksham needs to be absolutely banging the door down with form in the reserves. He is so far from an automatic inclusion i really wonder about some of our supporters sanity thinking he is even in the conversation for a place in the team.

You are kidding yourself.

Once in a generation midfielder. Thankfully we have two of them at present. Must keep.

Gutsy win. Especially given that a good chunk of our midfield in Zanker, Hanks & Mithen were down on their normal production. So there's scope for improvement on today's effort. Huge games from McNamara, Gay & Paxman. I want to give a shout out to a few defenders. The loss of Cordner to Richmond, Downie to injury and the pretty ordinary form (by her standards) of Libby Birch this year could have left a massive hole in our backline. The combination of Gabby Colvin, Casey Sherriff & Brenna Tarrant have improved week on week. Not only defending but setting up scoring chains as well. They're a huge part of why we'll play finals

You have go to be kidding, Oliver is a contested beast and only getting better, his outside game will come with experience I have no doubt he can be in the top 5 players in the comp and alongside Trac can take us all the way. Must keep these 2 boys 5 years +

Like I said with Hogan - no chance he’ll leave, close thread

With who?

For what? 2 goals 1, 2nd most score involvements, 6 marks, his pressure and contest work was all improved if not decent, nailed a couple of tackles. All against a very strong Freo backline. The breeze at the city end made set shots incredible difficult too. If Luke Ryan dominated the game like Lever and May did then you might have a case but that didn’t happen.